An anonymous reader writes “During 12th Annual Global LambdaGrid Workshop in Chicago, researchers have demonstrated interactive multi-point streaming of 8K/UHDTV (i.e., 16x Full HD resolution) using commodity PC hardware running Linux and open-source UltraGridsofware. The transmissions featured GPU-accelerated JPEG and DXT compressions implemented using the NVIDIA CUDA platform, which are also available as open-source software. The streams were distributed from the source to one location in the USA and to another location in the Czech Republic over 10Gbps GLIF network infrastructure.”

suraj.sun sends this quote from an article at the BBC: “Russia says it is prepared to use ‘destructive force pre-emptively’ if the U.S. goes ahead with controversial plans for a missile defense system based in Central Europe. The warning came after the Russian defense minister said talks on missile defense were nearing a dead end. Moscow fears that missile interceptors would be a threat to Russia’s security. But the U.S. and NATO say they are intended to protect against attacks from Iran or North Korea. ‘A decision to use destructive force pre-emptively will be taken if the situation worsens,’ chief of the Russian defense staff Gen Nikolai Makarov said. President Barack Obama … scrapped plans for a network of bases spread across Poland and the Czech Republic with the capacity to intercept long-range missiles. But in 2010, the U.S. signed an agreement with Poland to use an old airstrip at Redzikowo, near the Baltic coast, as a missile defense base.”

First time accepted submitter willodotcom writes “Germany has joined Latvia, Poland, the Czech Republic and Slovakia in delaying their signing of ACTA, citing ‘time to carry out further discussions’ as the reason.”

Beepl is a questions and answers service, which launches today. Co-founder/CEO and ex-TechCrunch blogger Steve O’Hear actually left TC to do this startup is convinced that Beepl can take on the the so-called Q&A field better than Quora. But how?

Unlike Quora where the questions come first and can thus make the service look quite chaotic, it’s Beepl’s aim to first find the experts in a subject who can answer the questions. It does this by applying its semantic engine to users’ interests as surfaced through various social media profiles, such as their Facebook likes, LinkedIn skills and recent tweets, along with their explicit activity on Beepl itself. It’s the startup’s use of this semantic technology that makes it different from Quora. Instead of experts having to look for or follow a question, the questions essentially “follow” the experts.

To continue the inevitable comparison to Quora, O’Hear told me that Beepl is more like social media rather than a wiki-type resource, “so we don’t care if the same question is being asked again and again” he says. Why? Because the experts it surfaces are always changing and improving,so the answers can be ever more relevant.

The questions can be also asked on Twitter with a hash tag #ask and the answers are fed into Beepl and represent additional source of information. This function however has not yet been tested as Beepl was in a closed alpha up until now (it opens up today). The experts are awarded expertise points, but their PeerIndex or Klout scores are not taken into account. Perhaps that could change – given that Beepl could become a social ranking for experts answering questions. We’ll see I guess.

Beepl raised $400,000 from Czech venture capital firm Credo Ventures last summer and is headquartered in London, but its R&D team is based in Prague, Czech Republic.

Meanwhile, Beepl is not alone in trying to improve the effectiveness of a Q&A services. In Poland a startup called Wisdio has recently raised $140,000 of seed money from local VCs and business angels. According to its founder and CEO Sebastian Zontek, the service aims to deliver questions to the right people taking into account their activity data on Wisdio, other social networks as well as their behavioural profiles.

Zothecula writes with an excerpt from a Gizmag article: “Amateur astronomers wanting to observe celestial bodies soon won’t be limited to just their own personal telescopes, or visits to the local public observatory. Starting next year, the first in a worldwide network of robotic telescopes will be going online, which users from any location on the planet will be able to operate for free via the internet. Known as GLORIA (GLObal Robotic telescopes Intelligent Array for e-Science), the three-year European project will ultimately include 17 telescopes on four continents, run by 13 partner groups from Russia, Chile, Ireland, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Czech Republic, Poland and Spain. Not only will users be able to control the telescopes from their computers, but they will also have access to the astronomical databases of GLORIA and other organizations.”

iPhone 4S comes with a number of new features and improvements, including Apple’s faster dual-core A5 chip, 8-megapixel camera, Siri – Apple’s new revolutionary personal assistant feature, improved battery life, faster download speeds, support for both GSM and CDMA networks and more.

Apple has announced that the new iPhone 4S will be available in the US, Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Japan and the UK on October 14th. Apple will start accepting pre-orders from Friday, October 7th from 12:01 am PST (3:01 am EST) or pick it up from a retail store at 8:00am on October 14th.

Apple has also announced that iPhone 4S will be available in 22 more countries, including Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Latvia, Liechtenstein, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Singapore, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden and Switzerland on October 28th.

If you are existing iPhone user in the US, you can checkout the upgrade eligibility usingÂ this tool.

Do you plan to pre-order your iPhone 4S or plan to wait in the line to get your hands on one?

What’s the News: You might think that identical twins have an advantage when it comes to crime—withÂ the sameÂ DNA, who could tell them apart? But new research with a squad of scent-trained Czech police dogs reveals that even identicalÂ twins have their own individual smells, even if they live in the same house and eat the same food.

How the Heck:

Scent line-ups for identifying suspectsÂ are regularly used in theÂ Czech Republic, Russia,Â Denmark, the Netherlands, and several other European countries. Trained dogs are provided with a scent from the scene of a crime and then sniff out the matching scent from sweat samples taken from suspects.

The researchers took sweat samples from two sets of identical twins and two sets of fraternal twins (whose status they verified with DNA testing), as well as plenty of samples from unrelated children. All the samples were taken in the same room and with the same scientist present, so background odors wold cancel out.

Then, 10Â trained German Shepherds,Â police dogsÂ used solely for identifying suspectsÂ by scent,Â were put through a total of 120Â scent line-ups byÂ police officers who had no knowledge of which pads were which.Â

In every single trial, the dogs correctly identified the individuals they were seeking, even when an individual’s identical twin was also in the line-up.

What’s the Context:

Previous studies investigating whether dogs can tell twins apart were somewhatÂ haphazard, some using untrained dogs or police dogs that were used in a variety of capacities, not just for scent line-ups, or very few dogs. The technique hasn’t caught on in many countries because of a lack of scientific back-up, but the researchers think that this study provides a more Â rigorous proof of the procedure.

What are the dogs smelling? The major histocompatibility complex (MHC), an area of the genome thatÂ codes for immune system proteins, is linkedÂ to people and animal’s ability recognize each other by smell—in a well-known 1995 study, young women overwhelmingly preferred the aroma of sweaty T-shirts of men who hadÂ different MHC profiles than they. It’s possibleÂ that what the dogs are sniffing is some variation in the expression of those proteins, though this study doesn’t attempt to address a biochemical mechanism.

The study suggests thatÂ even very small differences in environment or experience, such as thoseÂ experienced by young identical twins in the same household, can lead to biological differences—another mark against DNA determinism.

The Future Holds: The youngest twins were only five years old, indicating that even people who have the same DNA and the same surroundings begin to diverge at a very early age. The scientists suggest thatÂ future studies could look intoÂ when this starts to happen, with an eye toÂ discovering the mechanism.

As expected, white iPhone 4 is now available on Appleâ€™s online store after few hours of downtime in the US and also in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, and UK.

The white iPhone 4 is also available on Verizon and AT&T website in the US. Internationally,Â it should be available in local carrier stores and Apple’s authorized resellers.

MacLife reports that according to Brian White, an analyst at Ticonderoga, white iPhone 4â€™s “mystique and scarcity value” will drive sales of iPhone 4:

The purchase of consumer electronic devices is not always a completely rational decision, and people buy Apple products for many different reasons, including status, aesthetics, functionality, quality and the â€˜cool factor.â€™

In our view, this delay has created a certain mystique and scarcity value around the white iPhone 4 that we believe could drive incremental iPhone 4 purchases in the range of 1 million to 1.5 million units per quarter until the iPhone 5 potentially comes to market in September.

Some industry observers feel that the late launch of white iPhone 4 is another indication that Apple will delay the launch of the next generation iPhone â€“ iPhone 5 or iPhone 4S to fall this year.

Are you planning to buy or switch to the white iPhone 4? Let us know in the comments.

Apple today announced that the white iPhone 4 will be available beginning tomorrow. White iPhone 4 models will be available from Apple’s online store (www.apple.com), at Apple’s retail stores, AT&T and Verizon Wireless stores and select Apple Authorized Resellers.

White models of iPhone 4 will be available in Austria, Australia, Belgium, Canada, China, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hong Kong, Ireland, Italy, Japan, Luxembourg, Macau, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Singapore, South Korea, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, Taiwan, Thailand, UK and the US, beginning Thursday, April 28 and in many more countries around the world soon.

So after multipledelays, the white iPhone 4 will finally be available as an option for users planning to buy Appleâ€™s iPhone.